too strong to stop, too sweet to lose

We spent this evening going through our digital pictures and making prints of the good ones to add to our young family’s photo album.

We’ve been with my family a lot these days, so there are many pictures of the new baby, my brother, my mom and dad, etc. I love all their faces so much. I love to see how my brother and I have the same wrinkles at the corners of our eyes when we laugh. I love to see that my mom gets the same crooked line between her eyebrows when she worries that I get when I worry. These are the million little signs of my connection to this world through these people.

I know why people wish for immortality. It’s not vanity or hubris to wish the ones you love would never die…to wish we could hold all our joy together, to bind our lives in a single peace. Impossible, but not vain.

Somewhere, Willa Cather wrote “What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself – life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”

Life itself, small and fragile in my hand one moment, leaping away in defiant laughter the next. So strong, so fast. So bright, so swift, so sweet.